Today’s post marks the 170th MAKE Flickr pool weekly roundup. They’ve been running each weekend under that title, with very few interruptions, since February 2008, and have settled into a more-or-less regular format. Each Sunday we present seven pictures, in reverse-Letterman order, starting with the image that, for whatever reasons, is our favorite of those submitted during the preceding week. Generally, for the roundup, we choose pictures based on their aesthetics.

Naturally, we see a lot of pictures of prototypes, products, and other projects, and many of these are just off-hand shots more of a documentary than an artistic nature. That’s great. Please keep ‘em coming. Submitting your project shots to the pool remains one of the best ways to get our attention and get your work featured on the blog. But the roundup itself is about photography: Image have to be topical and suitable for our audience, of course, but once that box is checked off, it’s mostly a beauty contest.

And we’ve seen some stunners this year. Settling on only seven proved to be impossible, for me, so I’ve doubled the weekly count, for this annual best-of, to fourteen. Even so, I had to make some hard choices, and some regular contributors to the weekly pool are notably absent here, not so much because they didn’t share some amazing pics with us in 2012, but because I made a conscious decision, in these selections, to include more images with people in them. We love it when makers come out from behind the camera; please show us more of your smiling faces in 2013!

Best of 2012: Flickr Pool

I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c’t – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

Thanks so much for including 2 of my shots (5 & 10) – you made my day.

Sean Ragan

Martin, you’re most welcome! But we should really be thanking you for taking and sharing your photos in the first place. Those are both such great shots! Do you know anything about the wooden arm guy, BTW? Have a link or a name or anything?